


because you looked at me first

by ultramariner



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: Communication, F/F, Graduation Anxiety, Post-Snow Halation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 17:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6161487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultramariner/pseuds/ultramariner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the new year, Nico reaches out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	because you looked at me first

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mxingno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxingno/gifts).



Drenched in the stage-lights and the fading notes of their song, graduation feels closer than ever. Nico makes a habit of treating thoughts of the future less as impulses than scheduled activities, but this conviction’s so sudden she suspects it must have been poised to swoop, like a cold wind.

The snow’s stopped falling, she notes, idly.

It’s not like she hasn’t tried thinking about it before. There was their autumn of endless talks. The withered thin smiles Nozomi and Eli traded with her whenever Honoka said ‘next year’. There’s a difference between a sentiment and a certainty, anyway. She knows, now. A few vestigial splinters of frost are still in the course of their shuddering arcs to the ground, but the snowstorm’s over. The new year and the Love Live finals and graduation stretch ahead, but all Nico can think of is each battering step on the road behind them from Otonokizaka. 

The gold of the lights is still shivering against their silhouettes, like a halo or a sunrise. None of them have moved an inch yet.

“Thank you,” Honoka says, finally, in that pyretic flash all her speeches come in, and which is still entirely the subject of mystery to Nico. “ _Snow Halation_ was written by all of our feelings, you know, and by all of yours too. Thank you so much for coming here, all of you—”

—Or something like that. Nico bows furiously in time with the rest of them, and leads their wordless file off the stage first. Second comes Nozomi. The other girl shoots her a look charged with something Nico suspects is gratefulness, for filling that glittering, heartbreaking void of a moment. At least, that’s what Nico thinks Nozomi means, because she wanted it too. _Well, it’s good to know_ someone _here appreciates my incredible tact_ , Nico might have said if she were saying anything, but she isn’t. _You’re ruining the moment, Nicocchi_ , Nozomi might have said back, but she doesn’t. 

Instead, Nozomi pulls her close and doesn’t let go a minute or several, and Nico realises that what she wants to say is _thank you_. It’s on the tip of her tongue, but then Nozomi draws back with the lights glistening in her eyes and lightly suggests they all stop to eat something on the way back.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Akihabara gracefully ignores them as they drift from the stage to the dazzling promenade, just as they gracefully ignore the posters plastered up on every other storefront and streetlight for their own performance. It seems like they know how to talk about everything but the way they’ve just reached out to each other — not that Nico cares, or anything like that. Not that Nico's thinking about it.

“Wow,” Kotori points up, thoughtfully, at a sleek new video ad for A-RISE’s latest single. “I haven’t seen that one before. Have you, Honoka-chan?”

That’s the closest they come to acknowledging it. _Idols really are something else_ , Nico thinks, even this long past the limit of accepting she is one. They separate off into groups, then, in the centrifuge of idle conversation.

“It really is Christmas, huh,” Rin breathes out, a curlicue of wonder, mostly to the other first-years. So Nico isn’t the only one to have ridden out the season as an aftershock. She's about to glance away from the first-years when Maki locks eyes with her, in that specific way she does when she has something very specific to say. It’s only when they stop at a clothing shop Eli wants to see that Nico has any idea what that lingering look might mean this time.

“Hey, Nico-chan,” says Maki. Not the usual, blistering, _hey_ , Nico-chan, either. How exasperating. “We need to talk.”

To her credit, Maki’s tapered pianist fingers pause in the air before they circle around her wrist. Nico really doesn’t mind. She’s too proud or self-disciplined or fond of leaving precarious balanced things for someone else to disturb — _whatever_ you want to call it — to have that talk with her now, but lately they’ve been exchanging more quiet touches and at least _some_ kind of communication to go with it. Nico lets her hand be taken, anyway. Then they're stood in the flickering privacy of the side alley adjacent, still enough that even Nozomi wouldn’t dare creep up and listen.

“I need to ask you something,” Maki says more than asks, her brow pulled taut by thought or consideration or the usual combination of both. Still, this isn’t usual. And yet, it is. Of course Maki would be the one to want to actually talk about what happened.

“Yeah,” Nico pushes back, because she can. Because the familiar rhythm’s easier to deal with than this. “I got that part.”

“No— I need to ask you something serious,” Maki properly lets herself full-on frown for a split-second, then, “So be serious, okay? 

In the interests of easing up the mood, and nothing else, Nico keeps pushing.

“ _Eh_ , Maki-chan? Is this a confession? Nico-nii’s flattered that all her hard work and smiles have finally made your heart beat fast too, but Nico’s everyone’s idol, and besides, her type really _really_ isn’t—“

“Never mind,” Maki deadpans, but the wrestling match her face is currently grappling against itself is the more familiar, performative one. At least, Nico likes to think it’s performative, because there’s a kernel of amusement in the thought of Maki practicing scowls in the mirror the way she’s caught Umi practicing smiles when she thinks nobody’s looking. “I change my mind. See you tomorrow, Nico-chan.”

She turns to leave, but it’s more symbolic than anything, and she doesn’t follow through with any actual walking. Nico considers the angle of her back for a few moments until Maki turns around again, the glow of the signage down the alley casting her face in a neon flush.

“Anyway,” Nico says, with an at least admirable effort to keep the smugness out of her voice. “If you aren’t going anywhere after all, I guess I’ll bite. What did you want to ask me?”

“Did you know about Nozomi?” Maki asks then, abruptly, and Nico’s breath catches.

They look each other in the eyes, then — _really_ look, until Akiba blurs to a prismatic wash around the edges of her vision. It’s the kind of stupid question only Maki would ask, so delicately and absolutely poised that missing its mark would be the least graceful thing in the world. If Maki had really known about Nozomi beforehand, she must have wrung the truth out of her or Eli or both drop-by-drop, Nico thinks. Then she wonders why, because as it turns out, her expertise on Maki is — like most of her expertise on everything — formed entirely through the grind of rehearsal, and this dance is entirely new.

“Idiot,” she breathes, over the electric crackle. “I’m a third-year too, in case you’d forgotten. Of course I knew. Are you accusing me of not doing something sooner.”

“No,” Maki says, alarmingly reflexively for Maki. “No. I just wanted to confirm my suspicions, so don’t read too much into it, okay.” A beat passes, then Maki’s eyes tear themselves off Nico’s first. “Thank you for taking care of her. And I know you were, so don’t deny it.”

“Yeah,” Nico says. “You too.”

(It’s kind of unfair, Nico thinks, in the purest, most abstract of senses, that Maki never smiles like she does on stage when they’re standing like this. The new year is going to swoop in like a hawk.)

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

“Okay, but,” Maki asks in a whisper later, sounding vaguely scandalised by her own fascination. “How do you actually _deal_ with them.”

They’re in the airy safety of the club room now, temporarily extracted from that sparkling world a few days behind. They’d finally broached the subject as a group after the semi-final results had been posted, but none of them had quite managed to pierce through the haze of their victory. Across the table, Eli and Nozomi are engaged in some mysterious and almost certainly marital deadlock over costumes for the final.

“Ah, but I’m not sure what you mean. I think you’d look _wonderful_ in that kind of dress, Elicchi,” Nozomi is smirking, canting a tarot card about in the air until Elicchi stares a disapproving hole through it. The High Priestess. Nico’s going to have to read up on these one day, but at the same time the prospect of actually understanding vaguely terrifies her. “But that’s just my opinion.”

“You’re gonna need to be more specific,” Nico grimaces in Maki’s direction, and the other girl’s lips draw tight in an abortive thrust at a smile. If Nico’s being honest, she is very thoroughly weirded out by this new locus of kinship, but it’s not like she has the heart to stop it.

“You know,” Maki murmurs back, fixing her gaze on Eli and Nozomi so intently it looks like she’s plucking the right words out of the air between them. “The way they talk— like that. When I went to Nozomi’s house it was like they were speaking in code. Don’t tell me you understand that. 

Nico, in fact, _does_ understand that, and is very patiently going to explain the godly extent of her social intuition when Nozomi chooses that moment to turn to her with her beneficent crescent-moon smile.  

“—Wouldn’t you agree, Nicocchi?" 

Nico had lost track of the other conversation somewhere at the point of  _Umi-chan will report you to the chairwoman if you ask her to wear that, Nozomi_ , so she squints, then very deliberately raises her voice at least an octave.

“Unfair! You can’t ask the angelic Nico-nii to take sides so easily, when all she wants is for her fans to smile and get along,” she tries for a moment, then catches Nozomi’s look of restrained disbelief. No point serving her act to an unappreciative audience, anyway. “…So don’t even _try_ to get me involved, you she-devil.”

“Oh, my, never mind. I shouldn’t have interrupted a private conversation,” Nozomi’s gaze deliberately slides to Maki, then back to Nico with a self-satisfied look.

“…Anyway,” Nico turns back to Maki, because that seems both the only thing to do and the best comeback she can muster against someone like Nozomi. “It’s really not that hard, though. Not when you Nico-know how to be cute and considerate and read people like a pro, like every number-one super idol’s got to.”

“Please,” Maki glowers, forgetting to keep her voice down this time. “More like Nico- _no_. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you read a book, never mind a person.”

“Wow,” Nico says, with feeling. “Rude. It’s like you don’t even read my interviews, or something. Nico-nii is everyone’s idol and that means she has to work hard for everyone, so she’ll have you know she recharges her Nico-knowledge in the library every Friday evening.” A beat passes, then what she’s said sinks in. “—Wait, why am I telling _you_ this."  

“I guess the angelic Nico-nii was feeling generous enough to tell me when to avoid the library?” Maki raises an eyebrow, and she can hear the air-quotes around the words. It’s then that Nico realises Nozomi and Eli have gone silent across the table, watching the two of them instead, and it throws her off balance.

“Exactly,” she puffs out her chest rapidly, clutching onto the last word, until she properly processes Maki’s last words. “—Hey! No. _Not_ exactly!”

These back-and-forths come as easily as breathing now, so much easier than letting strangers into your club room, or letting your friends follow you home, or letting a girl hold your hand, even where no one can see you. Still, Nico’s smart enough to know that’s her limit for now. That shimmering night in the snow, they had all been speaking clearly to each other, even if it had taken hours to set it all to a song. Maybe that’s what it always takes, to do it properly. Anyway, Nico really is smart enough to leave it be for now.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Her ignominious and totally uncharacteristic defeat aside, deciphering Eli and Nozomi actually really isn’t all that hard. They turn up at her door in the thick of New Year’s Eve and each other, the evening sun glowing a deep ochre in torchlike commemoration.

“Sorry for not calling beforehand,” Eli says with a flash of guilt, then contains it in her next glance over to Nozomi. “Nozomi’s helping out overtime at the shrine for the new year — we were wondering whether you’d like to come assist us.”

“What’s with this politeness,” Nico mutters, but she doesn’t close the door on them. Every superstar worth their salt makes sure to thank the gods as much as their fans, after all. “Nozomi’s cards probably already said I’d labour over the shrine all night for her, right?”

“Not with that attitude,” Nozomi winks, then passes her the Hermit so that the card’s inverted from where she’s standing. Nico hadn’t been able to resist looking the meanings up, after all. Her heart isn’t in the next scowl, but she goes through the motions, anyway.

“Fine, fine,” Nico throws up her hands, then puts up a very good show of reluctance, if she does say so herself. “If you need me _that_ badly.” It’s not like the time she barricaded herself in the club room, though, or the time she ran away when the others discovered Kokoro, or the time she— jeez. Like Maki would say, she’s reading way too much into it.

The sun sinks behind them into the foot of the stairwell, and that same awful feeling sweeps over her again. After this comes the new year, and then the next live, and then graduation, and then— even coming up to Kanda Shrine, the susurrations of the electric lines won’t let her forget she’s in Akiba. Maybe it’s sweeping over all of them, but the others are too polite to say, and Nico is too unwilling to knock a precarious balance until she can do it with all her preparation — all her cuteness!

So they walk in silence until Nico raises her objections again, with as much fondness as she dares to muster.

“Does it really count as sacred if you’re forcing me to do it?” She scuffs her shoes on the concrete, divining out where she’s going to mop first.

“Nice try,” Eli smiles, softly. “But there’s no obligation to do anything. Honestly, we just wanted to spend New Year’s Eve with you.”

The evening light catches the angles of her face in a way Nico doesn’t see during daytime practice, or even on the stage. Nico had pegged this as one of Nozomi’s plans the moment they’d come to her door, but now that Eli’s put it this way, she’s not so sure. When the president had first joined, she’d been tempted to see her as a more well-rehearsed Maki (or, to be more accurate, Maki as a less well-rehearsed Eli), but she’s definitely something different. In strictly scientific idol trope terms, though, there’s a similar appeal.

“Jeez, you’re so troublesome,” says Nico, quickly. “Bringing me all the way here and then telling me you didn’t even need me.”

She catches her eyes mid-roll, then, and fixes them back on Nozomi. It’s not like she’s going to walk all the way back now, anyway. Especially not now that she knows they really all were thinking the same thing.

“So tell me where to start, already.”

 

 

  

***

 

 

  

The countdown to New Year passes in a flash; they whip Kanda Shrine into shape in the early hours of the evening, then Nico ducks around in her sunrise-bright hakama to finish the night’s errands. It’s not that she’s self-conscious or anything, but as the celebration crowd filters in she reckons it’s better for Nozomi to take the credit than two one-time part-timers hefting around the spare boxes. Not that she couldn’t do a good job of playing the role if she put her mind to it, of course — but there’s no sin more cardinal than an idol with an established role breaking character, and both her fans and the gods are watching today.

“I’m _serious_ ,” she explains this to Nozomi with infinite patience, making a point to attend her spare pointer finger to a suitably instructive gesture. “It’s practically obligatory for a superstar on the up-and-up to be conscious of this kind of thing, you know! Nozomi-chan’s known to be the serene spiritual type on every idol forum that’s worth tracking — so even if we both know you spent the night flirting with Eli-chan and making weird tarot predictions at me, you should get out there and sell the rest of the omamori. For the good of μ’s.”

“Oh, my, what’s this?” Nozomi laughs against the sleeve of her haori, and annoyingly enough, doesn’t even deign to acknowledge the comment about Eli. “Nicocchi giving up a chance to be in the public eye? I thought we agreed my Christmas present was the song in the semi-finals.”

“Ugh,” Nico skids her foot along the frost that’s accrued on the ground — but still as quietly as she can, for the good of μ’s, “Here I am, making the noblest of tactical sacrifices for our self-built brand, and you aren’t even treating the situation with a little bit of seriousness. So come _on_ , Nozomi! Before I change my mind already.”

“Aha, Nicocchi. Has anyone ever told you it’s sweet when you cover up your generosity like that?” Nozomi ruffles her hair, then, and that is the final straw of Nico’s benevolence cast to the flippancy haystack.

As a matter of fact, she is about to point out, Nozomi herself has told her this, on multiple occasions — but before she can contribute her much-needed insight, Nozomi shifts her hand and meets her gaze waveringly, as though she might revoke the gesture. The lights glistening in her eyes.

Nico braces her stare against Nozomi’s jaw (an idol should always look people resolutely in the eyes, but she’s on holiday and it’s her prerogative to make a single exception), then shakes her head, softly, so she doesn’t throw Nozomi’s hand. They stand like that for a moment, then Nico rushes off to sweep the last of the electric-town dust from the swath of floor beyond the pavilion.  Thirty minutes to midnight, the three of them agree to jointly run the omamori stall, the brand be damned.

 

 

  

*******

 

  

 

By the time the rest of μ’s arrive at the hatsumode, the sky is shining a deep opaque cobalt, shot through with the erratic veins of what stars are visible from Akiba. Nico can’t even pretend to be surprised; despite her best efforts at skepticism when it comes to Nozomi’s mythology spiel, the nine of them had seemed to align with laser-guided precision before they’d even gotten to know each other.

The countdown’s already ended, and there’s nothing momentous about the conversation that they attempt to fill the gaping hole of the last year with. Beyond the necessarily formalities, Eli very studiously avoids all talk of the new year and wishes and graduation and the future in general and most of all her own feelings; she’s really not a more-rehearsed Maki after all, Nico thinks, but she definitely is very well-rehearsed. When Maki herself appears, Nozomi’s gaze casts about innocently towards anywhere but her, and Nico thinks — analytically, for the sake of the thought’s own defiance, that she could play the role of the serene spiritualist much better than Nozomi does sometimes. Anyway, they are all seventeen and aching in their own bones, so Nico forgives her lapse in character just this once. A belated Christmas present.

The three of them make their excuses and leave to change out of their haori before the conversation can lead itself anywhere in particular. It’s better this way, she thinks, than to let the new year skyrocket off into reminiscences, or resolutions, or most dangerously of all, revelations. Not around Nozomi and Eli, at least. She’s scared to see if their skins peel back; scared to dissect any other girl and see the same beating-heart delusions, or the space where they should be.

  

 

 

***

 

 

 

It happens anyway, privately, as she sets aside the borrowed hakama in a neat folded pile and steps into her clothes from the last night. She’s not going to be a professional idol without μ’s. If she’d wanted her ticket into that sharp sunlight world, alone, she would’ve booked it already. Even on the first day of the first month of the year, the world doesn’t stop turning at the revelation.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

“How wonderful,” Eli announces on the walk back, in quick, stately breaths of the crystalline air, “to have a new year where you can see the stars.”

“How auspicious,” says Nozomi, agreeably. Her hair plastered down against the shuddering wind.

“It’s a shame,” Eli broaches, then, “that we didn’t meet up with Honoka and the others until after they’d made their wishes.”

“Mm,” Nozomi hums. “It’s a pity. But I’m sure they had a good time without us.”

“Right. Right, no, I think so too. I think, actually— it might be one of those things that it’s good for the first-years and the second-years to do on their own.” 

 _How does that idiot Maki think they’re speaking in code_ , Nico thinks, and keeps walking, with as much tempestuous containment as she can. She’s going to have to be the one to say it at this rate — the graduation talk is going to have to be explicit and it’s going to have to be soon, and then Nico can file away Umi’s new year’s nengajou into the drawer and be done with the whole thing. 

“Speaking of the juniors,” Nozomi raises her voice against the clear wind, then. Nico holds her breath. “Elicchi and Nicocchi in hakama seemed to get a good reaction tonight, hmm?”

“Oh?” Says Eli, though she hardly needs to confirm. When Nico glances over, her mouth is drawn into a thin flattered line. “I suppose that was the first time they saw me helping out the shrine.” Then she glances back, quietly diverting the attention as quick as it had been directed to her. Maybe it’s the distant wink of streetlamps as they drift back through the alleys, but she swears she sees a glint of mischief in Eli’s eye. “But that shade of red is very becoming on Nico-chan, yes.”

“Haha,” she says, with the bashful anodyne elegance of what she approximates to be a true idol. “You really think so?”

Truthfully, that had been an attempt at Kotori’s gallingly reflexive shade of cuteness, but she knows she’s bombed in the air. Nozomi and Eli aren’t going to resent her trying, but Nozomi’s more than willing to finesse her Kansai indirectness into something that still looks and feels like a ruthless observation — so Nico grasps onto something closer to herself before someone else fills the pause.

“Of course, Nico-nii was _pret-ty_ nervous about pulling off a new look for all of her fans,” she places a finger to her mouth, pirouetting a little because she might as well, then catches Nozomi’s unimpressed grin out of the corner of her eye. So she grits her teeth and walks against the wind, scrubbing the winter midnight rawness from her cheeks. “—But you know, it’s only natural that a number-one cuteness icon can make anything work, so don’t act so surprised about it or anything, Nozomi.”

“See, Elicchi,” Nozomi smirks, “I told you the way to Nicocchi’s true feelings was to let her keep talking until she tires herself out.”

“I still think that’s kind of cruel,” Eli raises an eyebrow, then fixes Nico with a very sincere look that she doesn’t know what to do with. So she keeps walking, naturally. “I apologise for her, Nico-chan.”

“My, my,” Nozomi runs a hand through her fringe; gazes up at the moon contentedly as though she’s done it some confidential favour. “And you both call me the cruel one.”

They fall quiet, then, the redolent waft of incense-sticks fading as the shrine ducks its head under the horizon.

“You two should just stay with me tonight,” Nico finds herself blurting out, her gaze trained hard on where the sidewalk fractures into bright silvery dust, “okay?”

“Hmm?” Nozomi asks. Nico’s sure that she’s going to break into another round of teasing, but the question catches on some invisible edge of her voice, and she straightens her shoulders in the folds of her coat instead. “What brought this on?”

Nico’s ready to deliver her most prizewinning smile — as not just an idol but a _scholar_ of idols, she’s intellectually certain it’s the response that would give the least of her away. Then she catches a glimpse of the three of them in a store window: swallowed by their coats, but stained cold-weather pale and shell-pink in the wind, just like they are in stage lights. The oldest and last three to join μ’s, and the first to leave. Her pride, or something like it, is aching.

Nico doesn’t buy into sentimentality, anyway. But just this once she thinks she can try honesty. 

“It’s nearly two in the morning,” she says briskly. Her eyes screwed shut. “And whatever order we drop each other off in, someone’s going to have to walk home alone. So it’s kind of just common sense that we all stay at someone’s house for the night, right? For _safety’s_ sake, you know. Nozomi, you live on the other side of town, and Eli, you said Alisa-chan was a light sleeper. So coming home with me is the best option,” she concludes with an officious clap loaned from Umi. “If you want, anyway."  

“That’s— very thoughtful,” Eli starts, the old diplomacy creeping fast around her voice like a vine. Like she’s very determined not to break out in any expression at all. She pulls her flyaway scarf back around her jaw before Nico can figure out which, or try. “But we wouldn’t want to impose—" 

She stops there, because Nozomi shoots her a tranquillising look that Nico doesn’t make it her business to miss. _You remind me of someone_ , Nozomi says with an almost-reverence all the time, like a prayer — to Maki, apparently, even to Nico, sometimes. Nozomi is hopelessly sentimental. Nico isn’t sentimental, and that’s why she sees right to the heart of Nozomi’s schtick. Then she gives Eli the softest look she can bear to, and sees the resemblance too.

“Jeez,” Nico says, dusting something imaginary off her hands, through her coral-coloured gloves. With all the patience she can spare. “You really aren’t, or I wouldn’t have offered. And like I said before, no need to act so surprised about it, either.”

A slat of moonlight glides in through the gaps in the houses, and treacherously catches their faces all at once. The three of them quicken their pace together, round the corner, until the soft lamp at Nico’s window rears up against the ink sky. When they come to the door, their shoulders jostle together instinctively, like harmonies, or plates of the earth.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Even through the lurid fog of her first year, Nico can’t remember a time the lights weren’t on for her when she came back home; it wasn’t like her siblings had needed it then either, bundled up in their neighbours’ care while her mother took her second shift. Nico’d forgotten to question it before then, the way thirteen-year-olds do, but roundabout the time she’d realised that flickering glow through the slice under her front door had an hour’s extra electric bill attached, she couldn’t help blurting it out one day.

_Never mind that,_ her mother had looked up at her properly, from where she’d been swiping on a new coat of corner-shop coral nail varnish. _I won’t have you coming back to a totally abandoned house. So never mind the electric bills. You’re getting older so I’m going to have to be honest with you — it’s my job to keep the four of you smiling._

The autumn of first year is when she looks into the sky and sees idols — sees a glowing silhouette of Nico that can do things for other people, like making them want to soar with her too. She’d always hoped to be the kind of person who could break in a new name as painlessly as dispensing away with the old. Obviously, it hadn’t been that easy. Not the way she’s wired. She’d always found it easy to earnestly file away the parts of herself nobody else needed to see, because that’s show business and there’s no shame in it. But figuring out the rest from the ground up — there’s no shortcut for that.

(She chants the name to her siblings like a nursery rhyme and they overflow with the thrill of it. _Nico, Nico-nii_ , Kokoro shimmies her hands delightedly, and Nico’s heart that day glows against the haze.)

That autumn two exchange students enrol at Otonokizaka, neither of which properly meet her eyes as she hands out the flyers for her idol group. It’s a pity, Nico thinks tactically, watching the crowd swallow up their backs both times. The very concept of an idol, she is certain, has been brought into this world to gloss over the edges of girls like them, even if the world doesn’t know it yet. 

From the day she stood up at the whiteboard and spelled her first name out in katakana they had all expected a St. Petersburg austerity of Eli, and she’d delivered the role pitch-perfect. Nico doesn’t _get_ it — how Eli hasn’t learned how to use that cold-weather glamour to do anything but deflect, even with a new start here in Japan. But she sees how the sunset glow catches the angles of Eli’s face after school, walking alone, and she does get it, really. With her teeth gritted.

The second exchange student, Nozomi, is a blend of Kansai-isms and polite social ricochets that nobody quite knows how to triangulate. She tries nobly to clothe the fact she’s a latchkey kid in the garments of a part-time shrine maiden, but everyone knows it, that her parents are travelling… come to think of it, Nico isn’t sure what Nozomi’s parents actually _do_ , but she knows they disappear from the picture partway through her second year. Something about Nozomi wanting to stay on at Otonokizaka. Anyway, Nico’s lost one parent, and in her expert opinion people don’t usually lose both of them unless they have a very good reason to. 

They’d both stopped to take her flyers, so Nico supposes they at least have taste. But they soon vanish from her mind and into the jaws of the student council, towards a different (and most frustratingly, _collective_ ) dream that Nico can’t really begrudge them for either.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

How weird is it, Nico thinks, that her and Nozomi’s first real conversation two years later would be about idols. Right when that gloss had slipped from her fingers.

“You have a lovely home, Nico-chan,” Eli says, after they shoulder into the living room and throw off the rimy weight of their coats. The lights still on.

“You said that,” Nico points out, with the last of her tact left after the hatsumode, “the last time the eight of you chased me here.”

“That’s so,” concedes Eli. “But things were a little chaotic then, so I thought I’d say it again.” 

Nico doesn’t have a comeback for that, so she attends herself to hanging up the three of their coats instead. 

“Come to think of it, isn’t this the first time we’ve been inside Nicocchi’s house since we chased her here that day?” Nozomi glances down the corridor to her siblings’ rooms, keeping her voice down just in case. All the doors are closed, and her mother can’t blame her for a little more noise than usual on the night of the new year, so they should be fine. 

“You’re putting it a little strangely, Nozomi,” Eli says with utter sincerity, but with just enough lack of the usual presidential gravity that Nico recognises this as a deadpan. Then, like it’s nothing, she sweeps Nozomi’s hands into her own, eliciting a rare yelp at the cold. Nico snorts loud enough that she can’t pretend she hasn’t.

“Come now, Elicchi. You can’t say things like that and then use me as a heater, it just— isn’t fair,” Nozomi says, confidential and glittering and a little delighted, then stops and glances Nico’s way. Eli’s gaze follows her, and they stand in silence for a moment, Nico brushing the residual frost from her fingers. 

“Why are you both looking at me like that,” Nico breaks the silence then, rolling her eyes indulgently. “I don’t care if you start a manzai duo in my living room. Did you expect Nico-nii to be anything but a super accommodating and adorable host?”

“We both wanted to check, though,” Eli says with a commendably loose shrug, then disentangles her fingers from Nozomi’s and brushes them off on her trousers. “I suppose it feels different? To when we talk like this in the club room, or when I’m at Nozomi’s house. And I wanted to make sure— we’re all— comfortable.”

Maybe it’s a non sequitur on the face of things, but there comes a point where Nico has to resentfully admit she gets the code. If they’re finally acknowledging they all had each other’s ciphers to begin with, she supposes it may as well be now. 

“ _Obviously_ , you absolute dorks,” Nico starts out strong, with an indignant blowout. “I wouldn’t have invited you in the first place if I wasn’t feeling generous enough to put up with you both.” _Feeling generous enough_ : that’s Maki’s retort, from the other day. But for once she hates how forceful it comes out in her voice, when they’ve both gone to the trouble of dropping their veneers for her. As a scholar of idols, she can appreciate the weight of the gesture as it settles in around her, or asserts that it’s always been there. “If I didn’t want to be part of that, or, I guess, feel like I already— _you know_.”

Maybe they don’t know, Nico realises, and she wonders whether she wants them to. Before she can give it another try, she feels herself slipping into the familiar rhythm, like she’s under a spotlight. Eli and Nozomi’s eyebrows cant up, but they don’t push back; Nico feels their eyes neutrally rest on her as she folds her arms around herself, crosses the room, and opens the door to her bedroom first.

“Anyway,” she tries, again. “Thanks for checking. But you don’t have to act like visitors just because you’re totally impressed by my house, you know.” They know, so she puffs herself out to meet halfway and hopes it’ll be enough.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Half an hour later, Nozomi’s running a shower down the corridor from her bedroom. They’d sat huddled together on the living room sofa eating Nico’s cooking, _because I saw the two of you take basically no breaks to eat at the shrine tonight, and don’t you think that’s kind of_ irresponsible _for an idol, when I’m taking time out of my busy schedule to perform with you all_ — with which Eli and Nozomi irritatingly hadn’t even argued, like she’d said the most sincere thing in the world. Eli had diplomatically insisted they both help her clean up, though, and they’d made a fast task of it so that they could retreat back to her room. The day’s winding to a soft finish — or starting, she supposes, given that midnight’s already long passed.  

“So,” Eli starts. They’re sitting on the edge of Nico’s bed, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, the moonlight throwing deep lucid shadows onto their faces through the window. “How is the duet with Maki going, by the way?”

Before the preliminaries Umi had stoically implored that they should all have duet songs, mostly because she herself very transparently wanted one with Kotori, and because none of them had had the heart to deny her they had all very faithfully performed deference to her sternness. With her tarot cards, Nozomi had devised a system for duet pairings that was as elaborate as it was obviously rigged, which had produced an interpersonally perfect set of pairings — and then, in stark exception, Nico and Maki.

“Ugh,” Nico proclaims — if not with cuteness, with, at least, feeling. “You know Maki-chan. She’s _impossible_. She has the music completely planned out, but she wants us to practice our parts on our own for two weeks before we start rehearsing together. Two weeks! In real show business, we’d be off the charts by then. She’s just lucky she has an professional like me to instruct her on these things, isn’t she?”

Eli considers this question thoughtfully for a moment, almost as though she’s going to answer it.

“Do you think you’re going to tell her?” She asks instead, suddenly.

“Tell her what? My opinion? You’re making no sense,” says Nico, as immovable as she can make herself. “How about you and Nozomi’s duet, anyway?”

Eli shrugs in the steely noncommittal way she does when she’s decided her personal opinion will do more harm than good, which is often. So they’re getting along swimmingly, then, unlike her own personal disaster with Maki. Regret is beginning to clasp its way around Nico’s throat, and she’s just about to artfully shift the subject, until.

“Actually, I think— we dodged around the issue, but both of us felt guilty about having a song with the third-years without you.”

No— that’s not allowed. Nico tears her gaze away from the constellations to strike down Eli with her most practiced look of total outrage. They’d spent the whole night tastefully skirting around their third-year status and graduation, and now _this_. Now that it’s out in the open, she feels strangely light, and unable to grasp for the right words to do the feeling justice.

“That’s _totally_ unfair, Eli,” she tries, slowly and very seriously. She keeps trying. Her tongue feels hot in her mouth, like it doesn’t belong there with so many words. “I thought we weren’t going to bring graduation up until at least tomorrow. Or the day after. Or some day that isn't New Year's Day, at your long-suffering friend Nico's house, when she's using every subtle bone in her body, which is all of them, not to bring it up. So what was _that_.”  

Eli clearly doesn’t have the heart to interrupt her until she stops, and when she does, takes a moment to regard her miserably. _Good_ , Nico thinks, even if with less fire than she’d like.

“Sorry, no. No, I don’t mean because we’re graduating. I really didn’t mean to bring that up.” She raises her palms, turning her face back to the gentle firelight of the constellations. “I just meant it’d feel right— for the three of us to have a song.”

“Oh,” Nico mouths, and stares back through the window too.

“Sorry again,” Eli’s voice is even. Nico still feels light. So light that she doesn’t have the heart to tear into Eli, now that the subject’s out there. It’s not like it’s a relief, but she can think of worse ways the topic could have been broached. So she does feel light.

“ _Please_ cut it out,” Nico huffs, but she can’t help but flash Eli a smile. “Or don’t. Whatever floats your boat, really. You know, I was kind of hoping that if someone brought it up by accident it’d be Nozomi, so I could blame her for it.” Their shoulders settle together in the slightest touch, hers against the hard angled lines of Eli’s. She feels Eli's shoulder flutter in a restrained spasm of a laugh.

They wait like that for a moment. Nico isn’t sure for what. Then an electric sliver of light illuminates the side of Eli’s face; she realises belatedly it’s the door swinging open and shut to let in Nozomi, now in her night clothes. Her hair’s undone from their usual ties, falling liquid against the thick corded curve of her shoulders. Wordlessly, she pads across the room to sit next to Nico, the bed comfortably dipping on both sides of her now. For some reason, she’d expected Nozomi to sit next to Eli. It doesn’t bear much thinking about now. 

“I told you,” Nozomi says, in a hush — splaying her hand out against where the stars, or their impression, filter through. “Auspicious.”

The cable-lines knotted up outside her window hum agreeably at that. 

“I really do love you, you know,” Nozomi murmurs then, oddly disconnected and with a surge of something Nico can’t quite identify. For an absurd moment she feels like she’s interrupted some private moment of Nozomi and Eli’s, but then Nozomi drops her palm and rests it against the bedsheets, in the space between her and Nico. “Both of you.”

She isn’t used to seeing bashfulness on Nozomi, the same way she isn’t used to seeing it on herself. Nozomi had said she loved μ’s, too, back when they’d granted her wish. Nico wonders whether this time it’s the same or different. Nico wonders whether she cares. 

“Haha. Be serious,” Nico says. It’s the closest thing to asking for a clarification that she can bear. She drops her hand to rest next to Nozomi’s, so that the edges of their fingers just brush together. Then she does the same with her other hand, until she hears a sharp breath, and feels the weight of Eli’s fingers gingerly settle over hers. She feels the stage-light on her, but softly. She can sing her part.

“I mean it,” Nozomi says. There’s a falter in her voice, the way Nico’s only heard in words like _don’t worry_ and _I have a wish_. “Elicchi does too, even if she’s too shy to say so. I wish we could’ve been here for you sooner, Nicocchi. I’ve missed you.”

They shift closer together, against the darkness. The starlight shivering against their silhouettes.

“Don’t say it like that,” Nico scowls. Just for posterity. “Please. You’re not too late.”

When she wakes up, the first sun of the new year has drenched itself indulgently over her bedroom. Eli and Nozomi’s heads are gently tucked against her shoulders now, the three of them still redolent of incense. Their hands join somewhere over the hollow between her ribs. Nico thinks of the space between their houses as winding, incandescent veins through the city, just to try and picture the distance they’ve saved themselves.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Early in the next week, the snow stops falling. Honoka’s scheduled more practice sessions after school, now that the roof is hospitably defrosting and the finals are coming up fast. When graduation comes up again unwittingly in the club room, Nico trades a thin smile with Nozomi and Eli and they talk about it, seriously. The seasons can’t stay frozen in flux forever, anyway. She can feel them changing already.

Evening is on the verge of breaking when Nico’s feet take her to the music room, where Maki practices. The two of them have still been seizing on every chance they can get to be thrillingly awful to each other, just to safeguard one sliver of constancy in the world — but half a week further into the independent rehearsal for their duet, and Nico’s beginning to think Maki has more than enough constancy for the both of them. Knowing Maki, she wants it to be pitch-perfect. She wants it to be clear as a symphony the first time they bring the scores together, but Nico knows that isn’t happening. Obviously it’s going to take more work than that.

She glances through the clear panel in the door. Winter sunlight has seeped into the music room in pools that look like spotlights. They glint hard-edged off the piano, into her eyes. Maki’s playing the piano.

She’s all chipped-down nails, open-mouthed scowl, shaking the flyaway hairs from the line of her jaw as she stares down the composition. It’s nothing like when she’s on stage, and Nico’s heart surges with the unfairness of it. Her heart is beating— of course it’s beating. Nico still hates admitting that, but if that’s what it takes, for another shot at that soft moment of recognition, she’ll do it.

So she swoops into the music room, and reaches for the words she’s had all along. 

“Hey, Maki — I want to talk.”

Maki glances up at her from the music. There’s a gold outline around her, from where the sun is still breaking through the window. It trembles as she shifts closer.

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to the unwavering support of [acrossthefloors](http://archiveofourown.org/users/acrossthefloors)!
> 
> title is from the hell idol song zurui yo magnetic today


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